Why have health and environmental safety initiatives become so important to the industry?
I think it was two-fold. Number one is that we knew we had to comply with government regulations. We wanted to act proactively and come up with something that is effective, that would not only give us compliance, but also best practices. Also, the markets were becoming much more competitive. For example, before, if someone was pushing 10,000 pounds of product out of a pipe a day, and he was making 10 cents a pound in profit, that’s a lot different from today when he’s only making 4 cents a pound in profit, because things have gotten so competitive. That means you have to keep product flowing through the pipe. In fact, you need to increase the amount flowing through the pipe to increase profits. Well, in order to be able to do that, you need to ensure that all that equipment is running like it should, so that you have a commensurate degree of reliability or what we like to call availability. Q: What went into creating API recommended practices for risk-based inspection (RBI) and fitness
